Kingston Waterfront, ON - Germain Wiseman

My Watermark is Lake Ontario in Kingston, ON.

Kingston reminds me a lot of Halifax. I was thinking about when I was in university working on an art project, where I had to go to different waterfront locations around Nova Scotia. I would clean up the shoreline, gather all the garbage, and after it was clean I would photograph the landscape of the waterfront — kind of like a before and after picture. Then at the end I would use garbage I collected, to actually mask the waterfront picture, by putting all the garbage on top of it.

There was this one sight in Nova Scotia, that was really known for being a dumping site. It’s actually read sad. I read on a forum that people would come there, take their garbage and go to the Point Peninsula, and just throw it in the ocean. It would go out a little bit into the ocean, but then the waves would just bring it right back and spread it out on the shore. It was bad.

When I was up there gathering the garbage to take the picture, I could hear somebody coming with a truck, which left a few moments later. When I looked back, I saw that they had left bags of garbage there.

It’s amazing because I also took pictures in Halifax, and the garbage you found on the shorelines there were mainly because of industry. This to me seemed worse than someone coming in and throwing their garbage. It was a little sad because some of these places were so beautiful.

I definitely have an interest in nature and environment, and found that a lot of other people were also very interested.

Halifax and Kingston are very similar in the way that people engage with the waterfront. It’s part of their lifestyle.